We didn’t move until the step echoes bled away.
Joren let out a breath like a curse. “I liked that not at all.”
“Next time,” I said, “you take his coat. I’ll take the blade.”
“Next time,” he said, “you try to not look like a sin walking.”
I smirked. “Anchor?”
We found it hammered into the pit’s rim, disguised as a support spike. This one resisted longer, the foundry’s pulse fed it, and the ward rode the heat like a river.
My first attempt flared and snapped. Pain speared up my arm, bright and pointless. Joren’s hand was suddenly on my shoulder, anchoring. Not stopping me. Just reminding me he was here.
I went smaller again. Threaded charge into the spike on the offbeat of the hammers so the ward couldn’t ride the surge. The iron shivered, then softened, then released with a breath like a man finally admitting a lie.
“Two,” Joren whispered. “We keep our lungs tonight.”
We were almost clear when a shadow peeled from the far wall. “You there!” A guard, not the hunter- young, anxious, wearing fear like a poorly tailored shirt. His spear waivered. “State your business.”
Joren stepped forward, all easy grin. “Delivery for Master Hefflin, charcoal for the morning pour.”
“At night?” The boy said.
“Charcoal doesn’t care what time it is.” Joren spread his hands. “You want the slate? It’s in my other coat, back at the kiln.”
The spear tip dipped. “You can’t be here.”
“You’re right,” Joren said warmly. “We’ll go.”
The boy hesitated and glanced toward the interior door but then nodded once. He didn’t want trouble, he wanted orders. We gave him the wrong ones with enough confidence that he mistook them for the right kind.
“Good evening,” Joren told him. “You’re doing fine.”
Once we stepped outside and could finally breathe again, he said, “You see? Handsome.”
“Reckless,” I replied, a grin tugging at the corner of my mouth.
He gave a loose shrug. “Differing schools of thought.”
We cut back through the lower ward, then up the service stairs to the cliff path. By the time we reached the hall, sweat hadcooled to salt and the wind off the ridge smelled like iron and rosemary.
The night crew waited in the side chamber, four of ours and two who weren’t. Not yet. But they had the look of men hoping to change that.
A map was sprawled across the table with small stones marking the wards we’d already cracked. A girl with a milk tooth still loose asked, “Is it true the runes will sing again?”
“Yes,” Joren said, at the same time I did. “If we do our work.”
“They’ll sing,” Joren repeated, softer, catching my glance. “When we’re ready.”
We fed them, counted tools, and set the street routes for watchers who would be ours instead of Vedant’s by the week’s end. Joren kept the jokes coming, enough to cut the fear without making light of the risk.
When the room emptied, I stood by the open arch and watched the ridge lightning in the distance. Joren leaned there beside me like he had nowhere else to be.
“You can’t keep burning yourself to a cinder on her name,” he said finally. No humor in it now. “If you snap the tether, we lose the court and you. I am not doing this alone.”
“I won’t snap it,” I said.
“You always say that right before you go and try to set yourself on fire.”
